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New Hitchhiker's Guide Book "Not Very Funny"
daria42 writes "An early review of part of the Eoin Colfer-penned sequel to Douglas Adams's Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series has panned the book as not being very funny. If you read Hitchhiker to have a good laugh, maybe you're going to be disappointed," wrote Nicolas Botti, on his Douglas Adams fan site earlier this month."
I always found humor in literature overrated. A few funny bits in any book is fine, but to read an entire book that was suppose to be funny. I dunno I can't see myself enjoying it that much. Even if the jokes were intelligent and witty.
They said the same thing about the Hollywood movie, and look how that turned...
Oh, CRAP!
No matter what author at any level of talent that had picked up the books and decided to continue them would be met with heresy or at very least a review of "not as good as the original".
As a writer I know how to mimic the words of others, but it doesn't mean that a person with a significant and highly educated fan base wouldn't pick up on the subtle differences, because no matter how good someone try's to imitate another person, in writing, it's just not the same.
Besides the fact that the expectations, especially those of slashdot's community, are so high you have little chance of being honored with anyone other than "mainstream" media who may have water on the brain, but enough money to throw at people to make them happy, even if slashdot or many fans don't approve.
Ave Molech Setting
Adams was a genius and having someone else pick up where he left off with anything makes no sense. If they are that good - they should be writing their own stuff.
I'll never forget the night I was baby-sitting some neighbor kids. They were in bed and I was watching PBS. A show came on and it was hilarious - that's how I found out about HHG - and once I got the books it was all over - I loved reading everything he wrote, even the unedited bits published after his death.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I don't understand what drives people so crazy about the ending of Mostly Harmless. Even Adams said he didn't like the bleak ending. Am I alone in thinking this was the best ending of a book I have ever read?
Sure it's bleak. I don't care. Nearly every other novel I've read that I enjoyed the ending always has seemed abrupt. I get attached to the characters and now the story just 'ends'. Mostly Harmless fixed that. Their dead. The Earth is gone. All of them. There are no 'what now?' questions left. The end of Mostly Harmless had closure - somthing I have failed to find in any story since.
Now comes this crap, off to ruin it.
If you think Eoin Colfer isn't a comedy writer, then you've clearly never read any of his stuff.
While I am a huge Artemis Fowl fan, I'm not surprised that Colfer isn't able to pull off the Hitchhiker's universe as well. Adams and Colfer just have a completely different style of writing, and Colfer's does not fit the Hitchhiker's universe.
I realize there is plenty of dry and black humor, in the most British sense of the words, but the triumph, in my opinion, was that he told a compelling story in spite of that, not because of it. Obviously if you found them humorous as well, then that probably lent something to the subjective quality of the novels. But the HHGTTG series had a much wider audience than British comedy does, so clearly it wasn't the humor alone that drove the popularity, and I think that focusing on that alone is missing the appeal of the books. It's missing the forest for the trees, the way George Lucas did with his prequels, assuming that the popularity of the series had something to do with the special effects, when they were really just a footnote in a story and universe (ok, galaxy) that we loved.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Sorry, but the LAST HHGTTG book, "Mostly Harmless", wasn't all that funny, either - and that WAS written by Douglas himself.
Considering that it ended with the destruction of pretty much EVERYTHING, I don't see how the new book could even BE - let alone BE FUNNY, unless the do a complete reboot of the HHGTTG universe.
("...with younger, edgier characters!")
www.eFax.com are spammers
Maybe the reviewer didn't appreciate the type of humor in the book. I read Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy years ago and didn't find it to be very funny, so maybe I will find this one funny instead.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
If you read Hitchhiker to have a good laugh, maybe you're going to be disappointed,"
So its like books 4 and 5 then. I thought book 4 was the best in the series, though I think I'm in the minority since lots of people didn't like it because it didn't have a laugh a sentence.
I disliked the 5th book so much I seem to have successfully suppressed it in my memory to the point where I don't even remember what it was about. Perhaps there wasn't even a 5th book and I'm just confused.
Loose lips lose spit.
People get all bent out of shape about other authors stepping in and writing works in a dead (or sometimes living) authors 'universe', but I don't understand how the Colfer guy writing a book makes Adams's books any less good than they already were? Nothing this guy can do can hurt Adams's legacy, so just go sit down, and maybe take some valium or prozac or something.
Seriously, if you want more Adams humor, and haven't done so already, go read "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" and the sequel "The Long, Dark, Tea-time of the Soul". H2G2 isn't the only great series Adams made.
They are great books, and probably way better than anything in this new book.
Mostly Humorless.
I have...which leaves me even more baffled. That was comedy?
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Funny, geeky, fantasy.
He told me he was a page. "Go on," I said, "You ain't no more than a paragraph!"
I only found the first two books funny. The rest... not so much.
Third was pretty good. Not as good as the first two, but pretty good (in my opinion).
The fourth was OK. Definitely a "OK, here's your damn book, get off my back." The best parts seemed self-referential - the supposedly final book is "so long, and thanks for all the fish?" Cute move.
The fifth was hilarious in a way because it seemed to be a genial "fuck you" to forces that insisted on a new book. He closed the book in a very clever way that resulted in the main character being killed off.
Then of course he died himself, which if he could have written it would have been hilarious. I mean no disrespect, but I think he'd have appreciated the symmetry.
Prolific British writer and comedian Adams
Is this the same Douglas Adams we're talking about?
so long and thanks for all the fiction.
rewriting history since 2109
I think Mostly Harmless made it pretty clear that Douglas Adams was more than done with the series. If any further proof was necessary, I had an opportunity to talk with Adams shortly before his death, and got the same impression -- he was sick of the series, and wrote Mostly Harmless because he had to.
I would much rather have read a third Dirk Gentley novel than a half-hearted Hitchhiker novel, and might have but for rabid Hitchhiker fans. Not that I'm bitter.
It doesn't really matter what the new novel is like. I'm done with that.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Look, when I was 12 (in 1984), I though the first 2 books were funny. The third wasn't. The fourth was terrible. I didn't bother with the rest.
And you know what? Not even the first 2 books are funny anymore. They haven't held up. At the time of their publication, they were fairly ground-breaking, but that style of humor just hasn't aged well at all (which tends to happen to all kinds of humor). It's juvenile and obvious, really. Nothing wrong with that, but it means the books have a shelf-life, and the HHGTTG books are about 20 years past their expiration date. They are cultural artifacts, not "classics".
The Hitchhiker's Guide was meant to be funny? No one told me that all those decades ago. I read it like any good student - as if it were a history book!!
Next thing, you'll be telling me that L. Ron Hubbard made up his religion.
Man, you slashdotters have a lot of nerve......
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I'm totally blowing my ability to mod because of this, but I hated the ending of the last book for the longest time. Now I think it's kinda funny, like some kind of uber-joke you might not "get" for a while but keeps growing on you. It was a completely appropriate way to end the series.
It matches extremely well with someone's explanation of where "42" actually came from - they said it's binary.
Hold your hands up to your face, palms facing you, thumbs in.
Now, assume each digit of "42" represents one hand - i.e. 4 is left hand 2 is right hand.
Now, what's 4 in binary? 0100
And what's 2 in binary? 0010
Match your fingers with the digits, and you get a glorious double-middle-finger flipping off everyone, kinda like the ending of the 5th book.
My favorite joke in the book, though, was the running "flowerpot that says 'oh no not again'" joke. That and flying. And crickett. Top 3, ok?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Apparently this was funny too. I'm so confused...
Maybe my funny bone is broken
Disclaimer, I gfot an A in an English exam on the book of Hitchhikers, the question on the peper was write about someone who finds himself in events over which he has no control, goodbye Huck Finn, hello Arthur Dent
Irony - Stating one's success in an English exam within a sentence containing several spelling errors.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
The HHTG series got less funny as it progressed, as Adams grew more frustrated with writing.
He hated writing with a passion, and often had to be locked in his office to meet deadlines. Since the fourth and fifth books of the trilogy were new material rather than expanded radio scripts, they suffer from this far more obviously - it took him eight years to write Mostly Harmless, with the other books all being released within two years of each-other.
I must also note that Adams already started on a sequel, (prequel) called Young Zaphod Plays It Safe Wiki
Unfortunately he suffered a TEF at the gym before he could finish it; his final joke.
If you have genuine interest in his works you'd probably benefit from checking out the soon-to-be-released BBC remake of Last Chance To See Wiki - A short documentary series following some of the worlds most endangered animals, Due to start September 6th on BBC2
The entire radio miniseries is available on the BBC website linked above, and is drenched in Adam's usual style.
Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal. -- Zaphod Beeblebrox
To quote the man himself,
"This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."